you good?

May 8th, 2019

“You good?” — A question I would ask to a friend I knew was up studying until the early morning. To my roomate struggling to maintain a long distance relationship while at school. When I see someone close to me struggle to leave her bed or finish her schoolwork, I ask, “you good?”

When words of support and reinforcement are not enough, I encourage those around me to return from the depths of their mind and foster conversation by asking, “you good?” A simple yet effective prompt for dialogue, asking someone if they are good feels far less intrusive than asking someone to reveal their hidden emotions. More than this, there’s no one right way or cookie-cutter scenario in which it’s appropriate to use, “you good?” The power of the phrase rests in its intention: to check in.

When someone asks me, “you good?” I find it difficult to shrug off their concern. They are not asking me to break down or share my deepest concerns, they are simply assessing the look on my face or my inability to go about my day. They are expressing the desire to help me in whatever way they can. They are showing me they care.

I often feel as though I am burdening those around me with irrational or incomprehensible thoughts. I struggle to disclose what is going on in my head, and it affects everything from the work I produce to my relationships with those around me.

But what I fail to recognize, time and time again, is that so many others around me face these same thoughts and feelings. Without a prompt to reach out to those around me, it can be difficult to find ways to help people climb out of out of their ruminating thoughts.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It can be as simple as asking, “you good?”

We all, myself included, peel back our layers on our own time. It’s daunting to articulate all we’re feeling, but it all doesn’t have to be put out on the table at once. Being asked, “you good?” grounds me in the support of my friends and classmates and reminds me that I have people to turn to when I want to talk. Same goes for when I check in with my friends; I’m letting them know I care and I will listen.

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Ilana is a student at the George Washington University, studying Journalism and Mass Communications. She is involved in MediaFile, a student run publication where she writes for the opinions section, Speaker of The House, a slam poetry group on campus, as well as a religious group on campus. Ilana has been published on a variety of sites, emphasizing her passion for entertainment, mental health awareness, and travel within her writing. She is interning with Active Minds this spring.